Sunday, February 9, 2014

Interview with Gardeniafly

Hi everyone,

Starting with this post, I'm beginning a new
series within my blog. I plan to conduct interviews with some teachers whom I
work with or whose materials I use. The first teacher I spoke with is
Gardeniafly. You can read her comments at the bottom of each blog post.

Hi, Gardeniafly! First of all, I would like to
ask you, what does your nickname mean?

That’s actually a good question, and students often ask me this. The
word ‘gardenia’ is the name of a flower and it’s my favorite flower. I think
that this type of flower smells really nice. And then I just added the word fly
because I find it sounds cool, and because the fly is a small insect which is
kind of an annoying animal. Therefore they’re two opposites together. You have
the nice gardenia and you have the annoying fly; I put them together creating
my nickname.

Then could you speak about your studies,
including high school and college?

Well, I went to a fine arts high school. In my high school there were
people from all over the world. This high school had a big mixture of people
from different cultures, considering how small my city is. We created art
together and it was really amazing there. I got to experiences different
cultures at the same time I created art.

And what kind of art did you do?

When I was in high school, I used to do music. It was kind of my
specialty. I played the cello and I also played the piano. I was better on
cello than piano. Nowadays, I don’t really havemuch time to continue it as a hobby. In Japan, there was no possibility to
play. Maybe, in the future, I’d like to have private lessons.

What about your college experience?

I went to University
of Georgia and I started
studying comparative literature, which is a field where you study the
literature of different cultures and compare them to each other. You see the
differences in the way that people write. Everything was translated into English.
I read many different types of literature in English. I tried to include
cultures in my college studies as well. Then I studied abroad in Japan and went to Kobe University.
I was there about 10 months to study the Japanese language, and then I came
back to America
and finished my bachelor’s degree. That’s my education.

Can you speak Japanese?

I can speak a little bit of Japanese, but I’m not fluent. My level is
enough fora basic conversation with
another person.

You mentioned you learned literature. Who is
you favorite author?

That's a really hard question. When I was a child, my favorite author
was J. K. Rowling, the woman who wrote the Harry Potter series. This is because
she sparked my imagination and I was able to create this fantasy world in my
mind. It’ was kind of an escape when I had problems in my real life. I think J.
K. Rowling is still my favorite author today.

Do you like the Harry Potter movies?

Well, I like movies as well, but I think a book allows you to imagine
things more. When you see a movie, you can see the characters and there’s
nothing left for your imagination. When you read, the author gives you a few
descriptive words to describe the characters, but does not determine them like
a movie does. I prefer reading because I can create the person in my head. It's
like a movie in your head and it’s always better than the real movie on the
screen. I'm always disappointed when I watch a movie, because it’s not the same
as what I imagined.

When did you start to teach English?

I started to teach English in Japan, in person first actually.
There is a website in Japan
that helps teachers find students who are trying to learn English. I started to
teach two students and this helped me to improve my teaching techniques. Then I
decided to start teaching online through Italki. I signed up to be a community
tutor on Italki. When I had completed 100 lessons, I started to become more
popular. Now I’ve completed over 700 lessons.

Where do your students come from?

My students come from everywhere. I’ve had students from Japan, Korea,
China, Russia, a lot of countries in Europe such as Italy and France,
from South American countries such as Colombia
and Brazil,
and some people who are living here in the States as well. These people who are
living here in the U.S. and
are taking lessons from me are usually international students or business
people who have come to live in America
for either work or school. You can name a country, and I probably have had
students from there.

Do you have any students who you teach in
person now?

No, I don’t have students in person like I had in Japan.

What do you like about online teaching?

The thing I like the best about teaching is that it makes me feel
helpful to people. I see these people that are struggling with learning English
and I'm able to help them. As a native speaker, I can give them more
opportunities to learn English in different ways that they haven’t thought of
before.

Which is your best experience related to
teaching?

I have a Japanese student. At first she was very shy about speaking
English. I tried to encourage her to speak more during the lessons. As time
went on, I saw she became more and more confident and she started to speak more
and more. I realized she knew a lot, but she was just afraid of using English.
It was very exciting for meto see her
open up in a way that I’ve never seen before, and her English became so much
better after about 10 lessons with me.

I like many aspects of teaching online. For example, I really enjoy having
new students. It’s like a breath of fresh air. Of course I like my old students
too, teaching them is fine, but sometimes it becomes a little tedious to teach
the same people over and over. My days become more varied. It’s something
interesting for me when a daily routine might become boring. It helps me to
work even better with the old students.

Later, do you want to teach?

I think for the rest of my life I want to do some sort of teaching, but
it’s not my main career, maybe as a part time job or something. Teaching on
Italki took a lot of time, and there’s not much financial reward. So I began to
work at another job a few days ago. I needed a job that can make me financially
stable. Besides that job, I’d like to continue to teach on Italki because it's
enjoyable, but my possibilities are limited in teaching. That’s why I can’t
accept new students right now, but I'll try to continue to teach my former
students. And I will continue to help you in editing this blog in the future as
well.

Thank you very much!

You’re welcome.

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Hi Gardeniafly! How did you feel during the
interview? What do you think? Is it a good start in conducting new interviews
with other teachers as well?

I think that this interview was great and it really got me to analyze
what I've been doing as a teacher. You asked some really good questions about
my experiences, and maybe this interview can help give other teachers insight
as well as showing students things from the perspective of a teacher. This
certainly is a good start to your interview series and I think it'll be interesting
to compare my responses with other teachers' responses.